Tamagotchi Plaza Review (Switch 2)
Nintendo Switch 2 is not even two months old at the time of writing, but so far the biggest games for the system are Mario Kart: World, and the newly released Donkey Kong Bananza. Besides these two heavy hitters, there are a smattering of sizable third-party releases like CyberPunk 2077 Ultimate Edition and Street Fighter 6, or if you don’t mind smaller curios there’s Fast Fusion, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, and now Tamagotchi Plaza. Outwardly cutesy and inviting with its weirdness, Tamagotchi Plaza tries to entice you with its uniqueness and adorable characters. However, once you settle into its groove, Tamagotchi Plaza reveals what it truly is, an overly expensive and simplistic minigame-infused tots game with no substance and few redeeming qualities.
Perhaps surprisingly for some Tamagotchi Plaza shares a little bit in common with its fellow Nintendo exclusive Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour. They both feature minigames, they both try to acclimate you to their experiences in belittling ways, and they’re both very flawed in execution-but at least Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour only costs $10 despite being a user guide that should be free, whereas you’ll need to pony up $40 for Tamagotchi Plaza. It’s a conundrum why Nintendo would sell two minigame games that generally nobody asked for and both of which fail to adequately promote the power of the Nintendo Switch 2.
Now to focus on Tamagotchi Plaza on its own merits or lack thereof. We’re introduced to the home planet of the Tamagotchis called Tamagotchi Planet, landing on a bustling berg named Tamahiko Town. After meeting up with your delighted, brethren you pick a name with “tchi” at the end and your date of birth, then proceed to meet The king, pops by to announce a new festival and the expansion of businesses and shops. This jubilant occasion wouldn’t mean anything if a host wasn’t present, so you pick a Vice Chairperson from a menu. The Vice Chairperson as it turns out is you the player, and the fancy empowering position bestowed upon you is merely a label for your selected avatar. Soon thereafter you’re let loose to explore the town, mingle with its citizens, and help out with the jobs that need doing, and finding activities to keep you progressing forward.
The trouble is, Tamagotchi Plaza throws you into poorly-explained minigames, where no amount of weirdness can salvage how much of a rudimentary and boring chore it all soon becomes. Let’s say you visit the local cafe to help business thrive by preparing gorgeous galettes for hungry customers, you’re immediately thrown in at the deep end because a customer will make their request, and the only guidance you receive is the picture of what the end result looks like. This means you’ll need to fiddle around with each item and pray to the almighty regal Tamagotchi king that you can compose each dish with the correct ingredients without burning it to a depressingly charred crisp or getting the customer’s order wrong. After you’ve made your ill-fated or Michelin Star-worthy galette, you’re given a smile rating depending on the accuracy and quickness of which you prepared the treat. You don’t need to worry though, as you can’t fail and you’ll still rake in the money, and there’s no extra challenge or reason to keep on making galettes. After completing one order you’re onto the next, and each colourful character will be lined up ready to place their orders, so you know you’ll be running an endless cycle of orders and trying to keep the momentum up while making as much moolah as possible.
Unfortunately no matter what minigame you proceed to, most of them are generally the same as they usually involve serving customers by clicking in and out of item lists so you can gradually concoct what they desire. Tailoring to the specifics of each order can involve using your imagination at times, like when you’re helping to organize tea parties, you are given a description and are tasked with finding refreshments that cohere with that description. Sometimes you’ll need to tailor clothing by looking at the pictured example of what the customer wants, then attempting to replicate it by choosing the shapes, patterns and parts, then joining each piece of fabric together until it matches the customer’s request.
Sometimes you’ll need to figure out what tools you need to get the job done as well, like when you’re at the bike shop, you need to fix up the bike in accordance with the customer’s wants, and that may mean you need to pump the wheels if the tyres are flat or wipe off the dirt with a cloth. The dentist-based minigame is another minigame where you’ll need to pick out the right tools for the job. Here, you’ll be brushing out coloured spots on teeth, using a drill when necessary, then applying tweezers to pluck out little devils and store them in cages.
Perhaps Tamagotchi Plaza encourages you to lose so that you learn. Whenever you start doing something new in real life you will fail at some things, but the more you do it the more it becomes integrated into your routine and the better you’ll become. Practice does indeed make perfect, but regrettably there’s no reason to return to these minigames unless you want to keep accruing Gotchi Points-the game’s fictional currency. Truthfully, the more time you invest in each of the game’s businesses, the more likely it is you can upgrade and improve them, and the more likely you’ll make Tamahiko Town ready for the king’s festival. It’ll still feel very tedious playing the minigames over and over, but if you perfect them you can open up new stuff-so there are reasons to keep dipping into Tamagotchi Plaza even in spite of your potentially rising apathy towards the game.
The exceptions to the tedium of customer service is through engaging in rap battles or heading to the gym. Rap battles involve you jamming buttons in time with the beat, much in the same way you do in a Yakuza game. Now to give rap battles some credit, they’re unexpected and they showcase the hints of personality in this game more than anything else. If only the charm of the rap battles were carried over to everything else, then the swill of mediocrity wouldn’t taste so sour. As for the gym, you’ve got to tap the L and R buttons as fast as you can, but like most other minigames there’s nothing engrossing or fun about it and may only be good at wearing out your index fingers.
Once you’ve played through all the minigames in the available shops and businesses, you’ll start opening up special shops and businesses that’ll encourage you to use your Switch 2’s joy cons as a PC mouse. Another feature that’ll remind you of Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour if you’ve played it, the incorporation of mouse controls are loose and more superfluous than anything, though at least it gives you another way to play the minigames if nothing else.
The basic presentation of the game’s visual identity and the invisible walls you’ll encounter as you bumble about can be forgiven, but the noises you’ll be subjected to when you play minigames are annoying and you might be tempted to play on mute because they add nothing desirable to the experience. Facial expressions are similarly irksome, they can be exaggerated like they’re raging to excrete themselves, especially the gym business instructor-he might be a shark but he’s got the kind of grimace that could melt wedding celebrations and smash the cake as well.
If you’re hoping that Tamagotchi Plaza has something worth playing on your new Nintendo Switch 2, you’ll be royally disappointed. All you’re subjected to here are a series of minigames that don’t offer fun, rather they’re more likely to offer disappointed sighs because there’s no challenge here, and more criminally than that there’s no juicy meat on its bones, just dissatisfying morsels. Tamagotchi Plaza would be forgiven if there was more going on and if it didn’t feel so unrewarding to play. There is some charm to the characters and the dialogue, and you might find the rap battle to be a tad cool, but everything else is so workmanlike that it seems to peel itself away from the audience it is most-likely to entertain-children. You might come into Tamagotchi Plaza feeling like you’ll be lightly entertained, but all too soon you’ll reach the conclusion that there’s barely anything here that’ll keep your attention for long.
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